


Haze

by Miniatures



Series: Archunters Verse [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Gen, Human!Lucifer, Major Character Injury, Medicinal Drug Use, brofeels, human!Gabriel, hunter!Novaks, lucifer is miserable alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3775168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miniatures/pseuds/Miniatures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most days it isn't so bad hunting alone. Being alone. Then Lucifer falls off a roof and realizes he doesn't want to be alone anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haze

In the end, it was the stupidest thing that brought Gabriel back. Luce fell off a roof.

It was an old house held together by mold and swollen wood and the whole thing had sagged like soggy paper when the ghoul bit the dust. The roof was all slick shingles and bird shit, slippery with rot. Lucifer took a wrong step. Lucifer fell.

And Lucifer came crashing down.

Most days it wasn’t so bad hunting alone. Being alone. He found company when he needed it, though most of the time he pretended he didn’t. But not having someone to spot you when you did stupid shit like kill things on roofs… that was a pain in the ass.

Luce thought he was fine. He struggled to his feet and he hauled himself to the car and he fell in, feeling bulky and bulbous and sore. Rummaged around in the glovebox, because he needed to dull the pain. A handful of pills and a thin joint and he was back in his bubble, back up, back on the road, rubber on tar and a head full of haze and smoke.

The pain came back a few hours later, like someone had lit a slow-burn fuse leading straight to his guts. Another handful—fuck his high tolerance—and another hour on the road.

The pills didn’t have a chance to kick in this time.

Luce pulled over at the first sight of civilization. Rundown middle-of-nowhere bar that twigged _Roadhouse_ through the haze—bar meant home meant safe meant somewhere to lick his wounds. But there were knives and flames and biting creatures eating at him, and his skin felt like cold wax, and he didn’t know if he would even make it inside.

Drag, drag, drag of his feet. The dust loomed high in his sight and then he was careening towards the sky again, a stumbling dance from car door to bar door. Bells and smoke in his head, ugly fire in his gut, and a blurry world before him.

The bar was full of bodies, twisting like nightmares. Luce kept a hand on the wall, pulling his bulk forward, to the— _oh halle-fucking-lujah_ —payphone not far from the door.

His fingers were numb sausages with bones and he wasn’t sure how he called for the ambulance but he did. Dusty highway bar, could be too late for him by the time they got there, but the haze was thickening and he needed to try. Gotta stay alive, but why, exactly?

He’d had a reason. Once. But his reasons were in New Orleans and who-the-fuck-knew. His reasons wanted nothing to do with him.

But the haze was thickening.

But the haze was thickening and he needed to try.

He dialed another number. This one he knew by heart almost as well as he knew 911—the second number he’d memorized since he left his old home phone. Roadhouse and Gabriel. Roadhouse and Gabriel. Roadhouse and—

“‘Lo?”

Not Gabriel, but the man who paid him. Luce tried to speak but his tongue was dead meat in his mouth. “Gab’rll…”

Shifting sound, then—“Who’s this?”

“Lussfrr.” _Enunciate, motherfucker._ “Lucifer. For Gabriel. Is he, is he…?”  

“He’s here, brother.” The man’s voice was gentle. “But I reckon he don’ wanna speak to you. He said not to answer if you called.”

Pang at that. Luce swallowed the dull, bitter ache and bit back the anger, spoke soft and slow and hard. “Tell him I’m hurt bad. I… I don’t know what…” _I fell off a roof. I walked away and I thought I took enough but something’s splitting in me and I can taste blood._ “Tell him I’m… I’ll get the doctors to… This number’s down as my ‘mergency…”

“‘M losin’ you, brother. Say again? You’re hurt—where are you, I’ll tell—”

“He’ll hear,” Lucifer said. _Hll hrr._ “I’ll be…”

The floor flew up to meet him and the receiver swung to crack against the wall.

 

Blur and pain. Blur and pain.

Lucifer had no idea how long it had been. His world began and ended with ringing notes in his ears, with the tight pain running through him like lit gasoline. It dipped sometimes, and he dipped with it, darkness swallowing him and spitting him out in turn. The dips were numb and empty, and he only knew he was a person in theory. Soul in a brain in a body and the body hurt and the brain was dark.

There were voices and faces and hands. Luce heard the same sounds over and over— _ruh p churr, blee d ing_ —and he knew in some distant way that they were important, that they meant something, but he couldn’t quite grasp the _why_ or _what._

Loose sounds, vowels ballooning out and popped by sharp consonants

_Kon tak t_

and Lucifer couldn’t

_Loo sih fur No vak, kon tak t Gay bree al No vak_

get a handle on them. He gave up trying, focused on the pain that wasn’t pain—it hurt but it was offset by milky cool drip, drip, dripping in his veins. A face made that same sound

_Ruh p churr_

_Kan yoo heer mee Loo sih fur_

and Lucifer felt movement, dull and faraway but movement all the same.

_Surr jurr ee_

_Ruh p churr blee d ing ruh p churr_

Blur and pain. Blur and pain.

 

When the lights came back on, Lucifer wasn’t alone.

He drifted into himself again, and it was strange to be fully solid, fully conscious of what was around him. The smoke was nearly clear from his head, and Luce felt naked without it. Skinless and exposed.

Nothing hurt—he was _sore,_ but it wasn’t excruciating—so he guessed he was still on some sort of painkiller. It muddied him but it wasn’t quite the same as the haze. Lighter. Duller. Like a headache compared to a migraine. Maybe he could take some of this shit for the road.

Funny—he hadn’t been sure what had been happening the whole time he was under, but now everything was piecing itself together in his brain with surprising speed. The details remained lost to him, but he knew where he was. He knew what had happened.

“Luce?”

Lucifer’s head jerked. His neck felt as if he’d snapped a chord but he didn’t care. He knew that voice. He hadn’t heard it in fuck knew how long but he knew it like he knew how to breathe.

Gabriel looked thinner than he remembered. His hair was darker, a little shaggier, his hands—clasped in his lap like he was praying—ropier. But the baby fat still clung to him, and the scatterfield of acne across his forehead didn’t distract from the youth in his eyes. It had been a long year, and Gabriel looked tired, but underneath it all he was still someone’s baby brother. Luce’s baby brother.

Slow tug of skin over bone and Luce was smiling—ah, so _that_ was where things got hard again. Movement. “Gabe. You… came.”

Gabriel’s lips quirked, but he didn’t smile back. “Yeah, well, they called me. Where’s Mike?”

Lucifer laughed, and _ow_ that hurt. “Who fucking knows? Haven’t… haven’t heard from him in… months. Just me, now. ‘S just me.”

“Oh.”

Quiet, and if Lucifer had been able to move ( _he would have smacked his brother across the face and then held him tight, dragged him to the car and never let him leave again_ ) he probably would have gone to sit next to Gabriel in the visitor’s chairs. Side-eye him, give him a wink. Bring back that familiar ease, force it back.

But he couldn’t move, and speaking was hard, and he had the sneaking suspicion that he was going to need a new dose of whatever opiates they were pumping into him soon.

Gabriel was staring at his hands. He licked his lips and he looked so like a fucking child that Lucifer wanted to shake him. How could he have thought he could make it on his own?

( _But he is, he is, he was doing fine until you pulled him back._ )

“Gabe…” he began, but before he could wrap his tongue around the next word, his brother had opened his mouth.

“Fuck you,” Gabriel spat. “You couldn’t just let me go, you couldn’t be happy I was out. You had to call. D’you know I—?” He shook his head. “I was fine. I was okay, I had… I had people, I had a job, I had a _life._ You understand that? And the second it starts falling apart you have to fucking call again, like you knew somehow, like you were just _waiting_ for me to have no one else left.”

Lucifer said nothing. He wanted to scream, but he said nothing.

Gabriel laughed, and the sound was bitter. “And now Mike’s gone who the fuck knows where? So I can go back to New Orleans—”

_Please no_

“—or I can stay with you. To be honest, I don’t know which sounds shittier.”

They stared at each other a long while, and for an instant, Lucifer understood. He understood why Gabriel had left him, why he’d run and why he’d cut ties and why he was so angry. He understood and he ached to understand, because this was what he’d been hiding from since Mike had left, this was why he needed the haze—the fact that he knew he had no right to ask for his brother back.

Then he slipped back down into selfish want, cold and safe and painless. Gabriel had to stay because Lucifer wanted him to stay, and that was that.

Something passed through Gabriel’s eyes, and he sighed. Stood up. “I’m not hunting,” he said quietly. “Not again, okay?”

Lucifer nodded. _Anything, just don’t leave me alone again._ “Okay.”

And then Gabriel was crossing the room and had his arms around Lucifer’s shoulders, and Lucifer was holding his brother tight against him and there was nothing for him to escape from anymore.

Gabriel laughed again, and this time it almost sounded genuine. “I can’t believe I’m still your emergency contact, you fucking loser.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the summer of 1994, after Gabriel's been gone for a year. 
> 
> I'm really enjoying putting this series together non-chronologically, it's such a cool structure!


End file.
